Freebies

Funky Map App for New York City, San Francisco, & London

Recce Map of Lower Manhattan
Recce Map of Lower Manhattan

I found this way cool mapping app in iTunes for our upcoming trip to New York City.

Recce provides an animated 3-D view of New York City that allows you to zoom in and out of neighborhoods, and locate places of interest.

The app enables you to visualize very realistic representations of the city.

The developers call it “immersive 3D cities on the fly.”

Recce includes functions that allow you to locate the usual services such as restaurants and hotels.

It also pulls in information on location specific shopping and dining deals from Yelp.

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Free Spielberg Films at the National Archives; Plus: Guastavino Vaulting

Steven Spielberg Film FestivalOne of the things I love best about living in Washington is easy access to cultural institutions — museums, embassies, parks, monuments, and libraries — all of which offer a plethora of free programs.In many Smithsonian museums and government buildings, there are beautiful auditoriums that present concerts, lectures, and film — often free to the public.

The William G. McGowen Theater, deep inside the National Archives building on Constitution Ave., is a leading venue for the screening of documentary films.

This coming weekend, the National Archives will screen a number of Steven Spielberg films in a mini film festival honoring the director’s work, that runs November 15-18, 2013.  This free, public film festival will showcase four of Spielberg’s critically acclaimed films.

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Traveling to Britain? Free Lonely Planet Travel Guides

Ye Olde Britain
Free from iTunes

Lonely Planet Travel Guides are among the best, so whenever there’s an offer for a free download, I try to take advantage.  The Apple iTunes bookstore is offering free downloads of a number of Lonely Planet guidebooks, including several specialty guides to travel in Britain.

The best free guides include:

  • Recession-Busting Britain — Best Free Experiences
  • Culture Vulture Britain — Best Cultural Experiences
  • Tasty Britain — Best Eating Experiences
  • Ye Olde Britain — Best Historical Experiences
  • Mini Britain Britain– Best Experiences for Kids

    Mini Britain
    Free on iTunes

These guidebooks to England, Scotland and Wales are full length 100+ page books, though there is a fair amount of overlap between them.  A number of the other books are merely teasers for the full-priced version of the guidebook.  Hat tip to Miles From Blighty.

The USA Best Trips free book includes excerpts on road trips to three regions — the Pacific Coast Highway, Highway 101 Oregon Coast, and Coastal New England.

One other full-featured free book worth mentioning is Discover the Beaches of Fort Myers and Sanibel.

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Ten Loyalty Programs with Birthday Bonuses (+130 more)

Screen Shot 2013-09-11 at 3.06.35 PM
Virgin America Birthday Bonus

Today my thoughts turn to the families who lost loved ones on 9/11.

Today is also my birthday.

Today while most people are remembering the tragedy that occurred 12 years ago, I find my inbox overflowing with birthday greetings from various frequent flyer and loyalty programs.

It’s strange.  I guess birthdays are big business, and loyalty programs everywhere are getting on the bandwagon.

These are the birthday benefits I’ve racked up:

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Maximize Your Rewards with Pick2Pay

Pick2Pay Wallet

If you have a gaggle of credit cards in your wallet and can’t remember which to use when buying gas or groceries, welcome to the club!

I like a new tool by Pick2Pay — it’s a free award wallet that suggests which card would be best to use for various categories of purchases such as drugstores or eating out.  There are both web and mobile versions of the Pick2Pay application.

Pick2Pay remembers the cards in your wallet, but does not require you to enter personal information such as credit card numbers.

Pick2Pay is also great for online shopping because it can show you the best option for leveraging credit card and airline shopping portals.

Furthermore, Pick2Pay identifies discounted e-gift cards that allow you to stack rewards on top of credit card bonus points.

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Molvania — Massive Markdown on the Essential Travel Guide

Map of Molvania
Map of Molvania
by Jetlag Travel

If you are a fan of Borat, and favor Lonely Planet travel guides, you might get a kick out of the parody travel guide:  Molvania.

This small Eastern European country even has its own website and public relations bureau.

We got this book for my father-in-law to read on the plane when he travelled to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.

Molvania is available in used condition from Amazon.com for the truly incredible price of just one cent, plus $3.99 for shipping.

The book is by Rob Sitch, Tom Gleisner and is published by Jetlag Travel Guides.

In format and page layout, this inspired send-up of a travel guide looks exactly like the real thing, and it displays an acute feel for all the clichés of the genre. —New Yorker on Molvania

Subsequent Jetlag Travel guides spoof Phaic Tăn, a nation in Southeast Asia, and San Sombrèro in Latin America (A Land of Carnivals, Cocktails and Coups).Molvania

On a less frivolous note, adventurous travelers may want to check out New Girl in the Air’s trip report on the beautiful countries of Slovenia and Croatia.

Free on iTunes: Away in My Airplane — Classic Children’s Book by Margaret Wise Brown

Away in My Airplane IBook

Are you looking for away to entertain your preschooler in flight?

There is a limited time offer for a free ebook (well, iBook) from the Apple iTunes store that should do the trick.

If you are a fan of Goodnight Moon and  The Runaway Bunny, you will love Away in my Airplane, a 2013 publication from the archives of classic children’s author Margaret Wise Brown.

Away in my Airplane is a charming story that will appeal to 2-5 year olds.  Artist Henry Fisher brings the book to life with a whimsical illustrations reminiscent of the Tiny Wings game.

There is a synced audio track so kids can read along to the rhyming picture book.

The electronic, read along version of the 32-page book usually sells for $3.99.

It is available as a free download from the Apple iBooks store, now through August 28, 2013.

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Airport Tours: Horses, and Rollerblades and Motorcycles, Oh My!

How would you like to combine your interest in aviation with your favorite sport — whether it be horseback riding, bicycling, or roller blading?Cincinnatti Airport by Horseback

Are you fascinated with art, history, architecture and photography?

Look no further than the public programs at airports here and abroad!

I have a guest post this week on unusual airport tours at FrugalTravelGuy.

I invite you to check it out!

Free Lonely Planet Guide to Northern Honshu, Japan

Lonely Planet Japan Guide

There is a prepublication offer from travel publisher Lonely Planet for a free download of a chapter from its forthcoming 2013 guide book to Japan.

The chapter covers the northern third of Japan’s main island of Honshū. This region of Tōhoku experienced the devastating earthquake and tsunami in March 2011, and the meltdown of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant.

The chapter covers not just the typical tourist attractions — it also offers information on how to volunteer in the recovery effort.

Lonely Planet writer Rebecca Milner visited the region to research updates to the Japan guidebook.

She reports that area of the coast hit by the tsunami is still in rubble, but that the inland areas that were affected only by the earthquake have largely recovered.  Of course there is still a 20-km exclusion zone around the nuclear power plant.

Milner reports:

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We Have a Winner

Southwest Airlines Drink CouponsI am pleased to announce the winner of the contest for two Southwest Airlines drink coupons:

Congratulations Sean!

His entry was:

I knew I was in Vegas  when . . .  after a night of drinking we couldn’t figure out what that bright light was and then someone explained to us it was the sunrise. — True Story.

The winner was selected by the Random Number Generator.

Random Number GeneratorThanks to all the participants!

Sean, please email your snail mail address to admin@Fishing4Deals.com so I can send you the coupons.